The Social Pane: Fact or Myth?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM truly has some of the most robust features and functionality in the market today. With the recent release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 this list of industry leading productivity tools continues to grow. In today’s post I thought that we could take one step back to take two steps forward.

The year is 2013 and the Dynamics world is abuzz with the recent introduction of the Social Pane for Dynamics CRM 2013. The goal was simple, create a place where a user can see all business interactions related to a specific record. To the opinion of many, the Social Pane allowed users to view activities and updates in a familiar way as social media sites like Facebook and Twitter continued their dominance in everyday life. Did the Social Pane ultimately achieve its goal of bridging the gap between users and fostering collaboration? Yes. Did it completely replace other form customizations like Sub-grids and Iframes? No.

Fact:

1. The Social Pane offers a single unified view of all recent actions related to a record
2. Users are able to take advantage of simple, in-line editing when creating activity records
3. Using the Notes tab, users can include attachments
4. Users can “Post” comments on the Social Pane to interact with one another

Myth:

1. The Social Pane is highly customizeable
a. You can customize which tab is shown by default (Posts, Activities, Notes), but you can’t edit the size of the pane or hide/remove any of the tabs
b. Additionally, You can’t add tabs or activity entities to the standard Social Pane

2. The in-line activity create forms can be modified
a. These forms and the fields included are as is and can’t be customized
b. Keep in mind that some required fields may be missing from these forms. Thus those records will need to be updated

Want to explore Social Pane in greater detail? Contact Alta Vista Technology today.